Change ready (evolve or revolve?)

From many meetings, interactions and projects in the world of commercial excellence improvement, we keep hearing the same statements regarding change and how difficult it is.

These statements are the same regardless of industry or world location.

• “Our people don’t really want to change”

• “They are stuck in their ways”

• “We see a difference for a few months and then the old ways return”

• “We need to make it sustainable”

• “It’s just on top of….more bureaucracy….why can’t it make things easier?”

These statements all come from the leaders and middle managers of the organisations we work with.

Reading around the subject of organisational change and the management thereof, these same statements come back time and time again:

• Organisations try and do too many things at once.

• Leadership does not share the vision of the future state.

• Change management communication is non-existent.

• We have to keep changing because the world doesn’t stand still.

• Change is inevitable. Change is difficult.

• We are too busy with the daily tasks to change.

When we first start discussing what is required from commercial excellence improvement, we often hear: “we need a sales process”; we have to update our customer segmentation”; “we have to have a CRM”; “sales support need to work with field sales better”; “marketing has to work closer with field sales”.

When we ask “why?” or “what do you want the future to look like?”, we witness two key things.

-Uncertainty

-Inconsistency

A key element of our ICE™value proposition is “we leave you change ready” What does this mean and how can it be achieved?

In order for an organization to become ‘change ready’, the leadership team has to learn how to align their respective visions of the future, and then how to agree the goals, that as well as delivering their strategy, utilize the key strengths of the organization to do so.

In order to define the future state, the current way of getting things done to succeed needs to be understood.

-What are we good at?

-What should we build on?

-What should we stop doing?

Deciding on what should be stopped alongside what should we do differently is vital.

This is the easy part of the journey!

“Communication is key”…how often have we all heard this? Well it is…

Communication is the only tool available to us which can help us close the gap between the current and future states…..the purpose of communication is to encourage the voluntary change of behaviours necessary to implement a change in working practice. So why is it so often neglected?

I no longer believe that people in an organization are resistant to change. It’s in our nature to change…its called evolution, and sometimes revolution! They are just fed up of badly managed change where in fact nothing really changes.

They don't want to just go around in circles. They don't want to revolve.

‘Change ready’ describes an organization whose leaders believe in the same desired future state. A leadership team that proactively communicates how they see the future, why it is necessary to change and one that can explain how that benefits all affected in a consistent and coherent manner.

They also look for, and act on, FEEDBACK. Without this, there is no evolution or revolution, just revolving…just going around in circles.

Do you want to be ‘change ready’? Do you want to evolve or revolve?